Deathscapes

Inspecting Hall County Corrections

Inspecting Hall County Corrections

The failures of inspection process are readily apparent in the ODO reports produced for Hall County Corrections. ODO conducted a compliance inspection at HCDC on June 13-15, 2017, about nine months after Moises’ death. The inspection found three deficiencies related to medical care. First, medical privacy was routinely not maintained in interactions between medical personnel and detainees. Second, medical intake screenings were not always conducted within 12 hours of a detainee’s arrival. And third, HCDC’s suicide prevention program does not require consultation with a medical director in order for a detainee to be released from suicide watch.

Importantly, the ODO report makes no mention that a death occurred at HCDC less than 9 month before the inspection. The report also fails to point out a number of the general problems discussed in Moises’ detainee death review. For example, there is no mention of the medical staff not being large enough to ‘perform basic exams and treatments for all detainees’. The report also fails to document that there is no written protocol for how to deal with seizures.

As the National Immigration Justice Center and Detention Watch Network argue in their report, such failures of the inspections process are important, for they put detainees’ lives in peril. Indeed, the failure to identify and correct substandard conditions in detention endangers lives.